Which was the first non-Settler Colony to become independent? This is a tricky question. Egypt might appear to have become independent in 1922, but it was never a colony and, in any case, Britain retained a lot of power. Something similar could be said of Iraq, a League of Nations 'mandated territory' which became independent in 1932 though the Brits retained a lot of power and toppled the pro-Axis regime during the Second World War. Iran was never a colony but, once again, the Brits had the capacity to exile the Monarch if he showed signs of being pro-Axis.
I suppose the Philippines, which became independent in July 1946 was the first non-Settler ex-colony to become fully independent. The French, the Dutch and the Portuguese were foolish enough to try to resist decolonization, but America and England had seen the writing on the wall- or, rather, done the arithmetic- and decided to get out before they were driven out or, even, incurred much of a financial loss.
Joya Chatterji, in 'Partition's Legacy,' writes
Decolonisation was a global process whose scale, pace, and implications are not best captured by a regional study.
Indeed. It was only around 1917 that it became obvious that the age of multi-ethnic Empires was over. The inter-war period, more particular after the Wall St. Crash, was one where everybody did stupid shit. Post Smoot-Hawley, there was a revival of 'Imperial Preference' type arguments for Colonization. Keynes helped propagate this foolishness. In his 'Economic consequences' he had warned that Germany would starve unless it grabbed land to its East. This was because, Keynes thought diminishing returns to agriculture had set in and the US was already a net food importer! I suppose one may mention the Lees-Mody agreement (i.e. the deal between Mumbai & Manchester) as pushing Japan further down an expansionist path. But, the truth is, gangster regimes are going to do crazy gangster shit sooner or later regardless of wider economic or geopolitical trends.
So what, one might ask, is gained by approaching the process from the perspective of South Asia?
India could have got what Ireland and Afghanistan and Egypt had got in 1922. But the Indians didn't really want the Brits to depart. They wanted to pretend to be fighting the Brits with might and main while either enriching themselves or quietly sulking in jail. In the end, it was the Brits who brusquely pulled the flush on the shitshow that was Indian politics.
There are, I believe, compelling reasons for giving decolonisation in the region special attention. India was the first colony to achieve independence,
No. That was the Philippines. During the Great Depression, the Americans woke up to the fact that people from that beautiful country were smart and could take jobs from Whites. So as to close the door to immigration, the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 set a ten year deadline for full Independence.
albeit as two separate nation states, India and Pakistan. Britain’s abrupt withdrawal from India after the Second World War – so swift that many have denounced it as a scuttle – raised questions that have helped frame the debate about decolonisation, not just in India but elsewhere. Did Britain jump or was it pushed?
Sir Henry Wilson, Britain's Army Chief, saw that Britain did not have the troops to keep India, Egypt, Ireland- even England, in the event of a Bolshevik uprising. His farewell talk to the War College was titled 'The Passing of Empire'. This was in 1921. Had Gandhi not unilaterally surrendered in February 1922, India would have got the sort of cosmetic Independence Egypt got. Perhaps, the 'big-gun' Princes would have taken turns presiding over some sort of cobbled together Central Government, while, instead of dyarchy, there would have been rapid transition to Provincial autonomy. Indeed, Willingdon, as Governor of Madras, thought Madras was ready for it.
Gandhi made a silly excuse to break with the Muslims because he genuinely feared them. Hindus like him had a fatalistic belief in the superior martial spirit and cohesiveness of Islam. In 1939, just when War broke out, Gandhi wrote an article saying since Congress was a Hindu party and since Hindus are wedded to Ahimsa, if the Brits left without handing control of the Army to Congress, then the Punjabis and Muslims would overrun the country. It wasn't till it looked like the Japs would replace the Brits as the protector of the Hindus that Gandhi told the Brits to 'Quit India'. He changed his mind after the Japs started losing. But, he firmly believed that Hindus should appease Muslims as much as possible so that when they took over, they might prove merciful.
If it jumped, was the prime agency of decolonisation situated in the metropolis, as some historians argue? In their view, Attlee’s Labour government chose to “transfer power” to independent nations from a Britain battered by war and mired in debt, thereby engineering a convenient “escape” from their Indian empire, while retaining, so it was hoped, informal influence over the region.
Mountbatten retained influence in New Delhi till Nehru's death in 1964. After that, he was of no further use to Number 10.
Atlee could have off set the UK's debt to the subcontinent against British financial claims. As the debtor, London had the whip-hand. Still, the Indian affection for England appeared like infantile dependence.
Others who insist that Britain was pushed, by contrast, are more attentive to local or “peripheral” forces and pressures:
Wavell, as Viceroy, was indeed defeatist. But, the fact is, Westminster was sick and tired of India. The hope was that the Indians could cobble together a Federal Government on the basis of the 1935 Act and Westminster's headache would end. The alternative, which Atlee was ruthless enough to contemplate, was to simply transfer power to whoever was around to take it- i.e. Princes and Provincial Premiers- and to evacuate the White population.
Why did Gandhi- or, more to the point, his financial backers- surrender in 1922? The answer is obvious. Imperialism was dead but Nationalism was based on language and religion- with religion trumping language. This was shown by the fact that Greek speaking Muslims went to Turkey while Turkish speaking Christians were assigned to Greece. The partition of Ireland was a little more complicated because many Southern Protestants were loyal to the Republic. Still, the message for India was clear. If the Brits left precipitately, there was a risk of communal violence on the one hand and Chinese style War-Lordism on the other.
Once the Indian industrialists did a deal with Manchester, there was no money on the table for intransigence in India- as Nehru bitterly complained. India was on the same trajectory as the Philippines with just a one year time lag.
Joya, with typical Bengali bigotry and bombast, writes
In arriving at this historic decision (viz. Partition) there was a rare unanimity between Congress leaders: liberals, socialists, and the hard men of the Hindu right all backed the high command’s line.
Because Hindus and Sikhs refused to remain part of Provinces where Muslims were in the overall majority. In any case, there had been big population exchanges after both World Wars and nobody wanted any sizable 'Sudenten' type minorities within their borders.
It also had the support of Hindu nationalists in Bengal – the largest Muslim majority province – who refused to be subjected to “Muslim tyranny”
Why the scare quotes? Hindus have actually been ethnically cleansed from East Bengal.
and demanded a partition (ironically not dissimilar to Curzon’s partition of 1905)
no irony was involved. The 'buddhijivis' had previously thought they could dominate the Province. But they were as stupid as shit. They will be squeezed out of West Bengal sooner or later.
that would give them a homeland of their own inside a divided India.
The departing viceroy,
was Wavell. Mountbatten was sent in with a clear mission- get out within a year. He did it in half the time. Azad, who hated him, has to admit that this Jolly Jack Tar was a wiz at admin. He also understood the importance of ceremonial. Thus, he got the 'natural' (i.e. non-arbitrary) solution militated for by the 1946 election result- viz. Partition. Jinnah didn't have long to live and thus took the post of Governor General of the new State rather than throw a spanner in the works by backtracking.
Mountbatten, lacked the vision or the will to resist a solution that offered Britain a quick exit from a desperate and dangerous situation.
Joya does not understand how the British Constitution works. Even the King, not to speak of Governors or Viceroys, have to do what the Cabinet- representing the Crown in Parliament- tells them to do. In the case of a soldier or sailor, the option of resigning so as to preserve one's popularity or reputation, would be considered dereliction of duty. Mountbatten had been given a shitty job. But he did it with aplomb and, later on, was careful to project himself as having shown leadership. Had he not done so, Atlee's policy would have been impugned. As things stand, Britain is not damaged if some handsome Aristocrat is blamed for vanity and ignorance and myopia etc. Indeed, Mountbatten showed his patriotism and sense of public service by taking credit for something rather discreditable about Atlee and the Labour party.
With his particular mix of opportunism and vainglory,
This is nonsense. Mountbatten knew nothing about India. Atlee had been part of the Simon Commission and, in 1938, had shown Nehru Labour's plan for India which, as Nehru said, gave the INC 'everything it wanted'. The trouble was that the INC had shat the bed during the War. The Muslim League had not. Gandhi, with typical maladroitness, had made Jinnah his equal. The 1946 election result confirmed this outcome. Thus Mountbatten got Nehru the best deal he could get. Furthermore, Radcliffe was pressurised to draw the boundary in India's favour as even Hindu Bengali historians recognize. It is a different matter that Nehru and the INC were so utterly shite that by the end of Nehru's life, Pakistan, which was as poor but much smaller than India, thought it could defeat that country in battle and help itself to a Kashmir which Nehru would probably have surrendered had he lived.
he persuaded London to accept the Congress demand for a limited partition,
London knew that the Indians hadn't objected to Buddhist Burma going its own way (incidentally, Hindu Manipur was given the option of joining Burma but chose India) and that Hindu Bengalis and Hindu and Sikh Punjabis preferred partition to living under Muslim majority rule. In other words, it was obvious that Religion would be the basis of post-colonial states in the sub-continent. Mountbatten was discreet enough not to mention religion and, later on, to make Jinnah the bad guy. He also shielded Atlee though I believe he was more vehement in this matter when there was a Labour Prime Minister at Number 10. But it is absurd to think that any Viceroy could act as a pro-Consul and implement his own policy in India.
pushed it through, and presented it to India and the world as his own idea.
Mountbatten and Atlee both knew that the real danger lay in Provincial and Princely revolts against the 'barristocrats'. The sub-continent could have degenerated into Warlordism punctuated by Maoist peasant insurgencies. Instead, India and Pakistan became deeply boring shitholes administered by 'Macaulay's bastards' or else faux Sandhurst type military officers.
Joya thinks Partition and the refugee problem had a big impact on India. This is foolish. The vast majority of Indians were Hindu and were wholly unaffected by the refugee problem. West Bengal would have turned to shit anyway because buddhijivis are as stupid as shit. East Punjab would have risen up, because Punjabis are sensible people- even if they have a PhD in Econ.
For good and ill, 1947 ushered in large changes to “the everyday states” of the subcontinent. Partition profoundly shaped and marked citizenship in India and Pakistan, and later in Bangladesh.
It made no fucking difference to 95 percent of Hindus. The one change was that subjects of Princely States became British subjects on accession.
It framed notions of belonging, and coloured attitudes towards government servants and the state itself.
Only a tiny percentage of Indians were refugees. Nothing changed as far as 'attitudes' to anything were concerned.
As Gould, Sherman, and Ansari have pointed out, assumptions about the loyalty of officers and men were fundamentally altered by Partition
but the problem of disloyalty was more acute in 1946 than 1948. Once a Muslim had made his election, the matter was settled though, no doubt, in India, Muslim officers would never be put in charge of anything strategic or possibly controversial.
everywhere in the subcontinent, even in its most remote district. Government workers who did not belong to the majority community were particularly vulnerable to charges of disloyalty and corruption, even as popular perceptions of corruption and partiality among bureaucrats grew more commonplace.
This had been true even twenty or thirty years previously. Morarji was forced out of the Provincial Civil Service because he was accused of partiality to Hindus in Godhra.
What was novel was harassment by the Custodian of Evacuee Property.
The discourses of “corruption” and “anti corruption”, Gould notes, were “often used as a means of creating or consolidating social advantage”;
The discourse of corruption first made itself felt in my ancestral District back in the 1840's. By the 1890s there were plenty of pamphlets and posters accusing this official or that of corruption or being under the thumb of their wives or some other such nonsense. Sensible officials ignored this sort of thing because it would turn out that the thing had been written by the sixteen year old grand-nephew of your own Munim or Munshi.
and in a context where flux and change intensified these struggles for advantage, the discourse of corruption undermined public faith in government itself.
Fuck off! Even in the time of Kautilya, Indians had zero faith in any type of government.
It quickly led to a mood of disillusionment and put a dampener on the euphoria of freedom,
Malnourishment has that effect.
a mood brilliantly captured in R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi novels.
What fucking Refugee problem did Mysore face? Anyway, Malgudi didn't change after Independence because Provincial Autonomy already existed when Narayan was first published. Compare 'Murugan the Tiller' with 'Swami'. There is no English umpire in the latter. For all practical purposes, the English had left or were a purely ornamental presence. One interesting aspect of British rule was that an Eighth Standard Pass, like VP Menon, could become Reform Commissioner purely on the basis of ability. Under Nehru, only the most brilliant Cambridge graduates got to fuck up the Economy. RK Narayan and Laxman understood this aspect of the comedy of elite Indian politics. Joya Chatterji does not. As an immigrant to this country, she feels her job is to teach the descendants of immigrants like herself that Whitey be Debil. It is outrageous that many White peeps are still refusing to at least emulate the zebra and have some black stripes or else paint nice yellow and orange polka dots on their skin.
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